BE KIND REWIND (2008)

BE KIND REWIND (2008)

Tagline: You Name It, We Shoot It.

(Comedy, Drama, VHS) [PG-13]

Anything you say can and will be held against you...in the court of Robocop.

In this one, a historic but dying video rental store is on its last legs so the owner Mr. Fletcher decides to embark on a trip to see if he can make the necessary innovations to keep the store open. He ends up leaving his store clerk Mike in charge who with the help of his idiot friend Jerry end up accidentally erasing every video in the entire store. To continue renting they decide to "Swede" any requested title. This involves them reshooting the entire movie on virtually no budget then charging more for people to rent it. Can these two and their new co-star Alma save the rental store?

So as it turns out in 2022 as of the writing of this review, there are still a few Superstar Video stores here in AZ. Superstar Video at one point was sort of an alternative rival to Hollywood Video and to a lesser extent Blockbuster Video. So video rental stores are totally dead, but they are definitely on life support. I vividly remember the last of the Blockbuster Video days here in AZ and taking advantage of the crazy low-priced DVD sales they had. So naturally watching this movie brought back some nostalgia from my high school years. 

I also remember seeing the preview for this and thinking it was a really cool concept. I will say that Jack Black (most famous for JUMANJI: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE) kills it as Jerry in this, but there are parts of his character’s personality I dislike.  Yasiin Bey (a.k.a. Mos Def) is great in this and I identified with his character “Mike” a lot more than I did Jerry. We also get a great performance out of Melonie Diaz as Alma. It’s to the point where I don’t think I would have enjoyed most of this movie if she wasn’t in it. Danny Glover (who was actually in another Jack Black movie JUMANJI: THE NEXT LEVEL) doesn’t get a ton of screen time but is pretty good as the store owner Mr. Fletcher. 

At first glance from the previews it kind of looks like we are going to get a full movie of these two dudes re-making movies in the most hilarious way possible. We do actually get some of that, but the majority if this movie is about the video rental shop and a lot of exposition on the history of the town they are in. I loved this aspect of the film to an extent, but I kind of wish we had gotten more nonsense. After a lot of the cooler re-make ideas were done on the “Swede” version of GHOSTBUSTERS, it would have been nice to see the guys make a lot of the movies mentioned but that we never got to see. 

Overall this movie about making a bunch of re-made movies has two or three movies inside of it and that ends up in a pretty unbalanced film. To the point where even when the movies tugs at our emotional heartstrings, it feels almost boring against the promise of the trailer. I wish I liked this more, but it’s a case of a great premise executed about halfway to what it could have been. 

I have to give this thing a 3 out of 7. I don’t see myself buying it or watching it again. Even if they did a “Swede” version of it. 

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF NEW LINE CINEMA AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY. 

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